Conventional dress and sport shirts are ordinarily fabricated with collar constructions shaped and cut to a particular neck size. While many shirts suggest the shirt is adapted for a small range of sizes, as a practical matter that is not the case since the shirt collar bands are ordinarily made with non-stretchable components that have no give or yield once the shirt is buttoned to the neck.
Some shirts have been designed in efforts to provide some stretchability of the shirt in the neck. These efforts, insofar as known, do not provide as great a comfort as one would wish, does not have the same reliability and performance as might be desired for shirts having substantial qualities. In particular, prior designs may permit too much stretching and thereby result in shirts with stretched collars that have unsightly appearances and elastic or stretchable systems that do not stand up to wear and ultimately fail. These prior art systems are also uncomfortable to the wearer since the components used to permit adjustable neck sizes are frequently bulky and; uncomfortable to wear.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an improved shirt collar mechanism that allows a wearer to dynamically adjust a collar size over a defined length as, for example, one whole size while at all times maintaining an appropriate; appearance of the shirt collar when properly worn. A further object of the present invention is to provide a dynamically adjustable shirt collar that accommodates changes in a person's neck size on a long-term basis, as will occur when the wearer either gains or loses weight, or on a short-time basis when the wearer sneezes or otherwise flexes his neck.
A shirt collar designed primarily for dress or sports shirts is provided in which an adjustable collar is secured to the shirt body by a collar stand or collar band in a conventional fashion. An elongated length of fabric or strip is positioned within a fold in the collar band, with one end projecting through a slot or button hole in the collar band, and having a button secured to one end of the strip. The other end of the elongated strip is fixed to one side of an elastic member with the other side of the elastic member bar-tacked to the collar band. The button stitched to the one end of the strip is normally aligned with and interengaged with a button hole on the opposite side of the collar band when the shirt collar is closed.